


Buttons

by thirdspinsterfromtheleft



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Series: Protector of the Small, boobs and armor don't mix sometimes, snarky healers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:03:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirdspinsterfromtheleft/pseuds/thirdspinsterfromtheleft
Summary: Kel visits the infirmary tent after the battle at Forgotten Well.





	Buttons

The ride from Forgotten Well back to the fort seemed much longer than the ride out. Kel felt more and more battered with each step Peachblossom took. She dreaded the report she would have to write up as field commander in a skirmish and hoped, a little guiltily, that Lerant would take care of Drum.

"You ought to get yourself to the healers, Squire Kel," Fulcher commented as they drew close to the fort. "After the way that thing walloped you against the rocks."

Raoul looked at Kel.

"I think I'm fine," Kel said, voice still hoarse. "Maybe a bruised rib. It's hard to tell." Fighting in armor always left a mark. There was a sharp pain in her side and a deep ache in her back that surpassed jousting bruises. It was being more and more difficult to take a deep breath, reminding her of her match with Voelden of Tirrsmont. She also felt a fierce itch running along the middle of her spine, which made her wonder if the thing had managed to hit her hard enough to break the skin even through layers of armor and clothing.

"Go anyway, once you've seen to Peachblossom," Raoul ordered. "A serving man can see to Drum. It won't do for you to be bleeding internally while you're mending tack.”

"No, my lord," Kel murmured. Raoul snorted.

“Well done today, Kel,” he murmured. “You did well for yourself.”

Unsaddling Peachblossom, she discovered that raising her left arm made her side hurt so much she saw spots. Thanking the Goddess for kind knight-masters, she groomed and fed him very slowly. His tack was dusty, but was free from damage and battle grime since Peachblossom had stayed out of the fighting. Despite Raoul’s orders, she checked Drum to be sure he was comfortable and found him munching his dinner. The serving-man had finished well before she did.

The healer sighed when Kel walked in the tent. Hours after the fighting had ended, most who had required care had received it. They hadn’t been hit has hard as they might have been; sparse lamplight showed that only half the beds were occupied with sleeping men.

"Yes, what is it?" she demanded briskly.

"I cracked a rib, I think," Kel croaked.

" _Hmph_. And you come in here with your mail still on because I can see through metal?" The healer led Kel to stand under a lamp, next to an empty bed. She reached under Kel's sleeve to hold her bare wrist in her fingers. The light showed two more empty beds on the side nearer to the tent-flap and left the bed on the other side, its occupant sleeping propped on pillows with his head listing to the side, in shadows.

"I couldn't get it off," Kel admitted. She had managed her cuirass and mail leggings and replaced her breeches with fresh ones after sponging dried sweat from her legs, but getting out of her mail shirt required more flexibility than she could manage without feeling like she would pass out. "Raising my arm-"

"And so you come to me, because it is my job to find a solution to everything," the healer cut her off, releasing her wrist gently despite her sharp tone. "Here is my solution: take a squire!"

"I am a squire," Kel said meekly.

"Ah. Then you ought to make some friends, hadn’t you? Well, squire, take off your boots.” As Kel stiffly sat on a chair and did so, the healer went to the tent flap, muttering, “A healer is not an attendant. You! Standard bearer!"

Lerant came in. "Mistress healer?" He spoke crisply, but raised his eyebrows at Kel.

"Help the squire with his mail."

"Help the squire with _his_ mail?" Lerant asked, brows lifting higher.

"That is what I said. If I am to see to his ribs, I must be able to see them."

"Very well, mistress healer, I shall help the squire with his mail."

The healer apparently didn't notice Lerant's mocking tone, or considered it inconsequential. Kel opened her mouth to set matters straight, sore throat or no, but the healer spoke first.

"Now, I shall lift the arm," she took hold of Kel's left arm despite her earlier words, "And you, squire, try not to help me; that will only make it worse. Relax your muscles. Standard-bearer, you raise the right arm and pull off the mail, here." She tapped the shirt by the back of the neck.

Kel and Lerant both did as they were told. Not helping the healer was harder than Kel had expected, but she did her best to keep the muscles in her side relaxed.

“What did you do, get stepped on by that giant I’ve heard so much about?” The healer’s voice was as sharp as it had been since Kel walked in, but the hand lifting her arm and the one helping Lerant to slide the mail shirt off were gentle.

“Bashed into some boulders,” said Kel into the links brushing her face, trying to stop gritting her teeth long enough to speak without mumbling. The whole maneuver was accomplished with less agony than Kel had expected after her attempts by herself in her tent. Lerant draped the mail shirt over the back of the chair.

"And now the shirt," said the healer, picking up a large pair of shears.

A comical look of panic passed Lerant's face. "But--but-"

"Mistress Healer, I'm Squire Keladry," Kel said, taking pity on him.

"She's a girl!" Lerant exclaimed, less tactfully

The healer peered at Kel more closely. “Hmm. Very well then, standard-bearer, we shall save you from the sight. You may go.”

Lerant fled.

"Well, Squire Keladry, are you wearing a breastband?" she demanded.

"Yes, mistress healer," Kel said.

“Well done. Since any men about are sleeping, I can cut off what I am sure was once a perfectly respectable garment without anyone fainting away at the sight.”

The sight of Kel's bare bosom would hardly inspire anyone to faint, Kel reflected, but she appreciated the healer's efforts to preserve her dignity.

The sun has been hot that afternoon, and sweat had glued Kel's shirt to her torso. The healer tugged it away from her back and cut from the bottom to the top, then carefully peeled it away.

The shirt was halfway down her arms when Kel felt the ends of her breastband flapping loose along with the shirt and realized the fastenings must have broken. She swore and instinctively clamped her arms to her sides. That kept her chest covered, but moving her arms so suddenly made her reel in pain.

The healer kept her from falling out of the chair. "None of that, if you please," she said primly. "You don't get to use Language until you are knighted. And at least bleeding."

"Um. You know Yamani?" Kel said once she was mostly stable. She had gotten into the habit of using swear words Lalasa couldn't understand when she was a page, back when her maid still jumped at every unexpected move. "I think I popped a button," she added, probably unnecessarily.

"I don't need to know Yamani, I know Language when I hear it." The healer prodded Kel's back. "You did pop a button. Five of them, to be precise, the splinters of which are now embedded in your back. You foolish girl, what possessed you to wear a breastband with buttons under your armour? Do you have none that lace up?"

This breastband had been the last Kel owned with buttons, one she wore only when the rest needed washing. "I was trying to wear this one out," Kel explained, feeling no less foolish because she agreed with the healer.

It was quicker to fasten buttons than to feed laces though their holes and tie the ends, at least when she had Lalassa’s help. Her maid, always conscious of small details, had preferred breastbands with buttons that faced in, against Kel's skin, because they showed less through her shirts. It may have looked neater, but inward buttons were even more fiddly to do up by herself, and they dug in when she wore armor. Dressing alone, Kel found it easier to lace a breastband loosely around her waist then pull it up to tighten and tie it. Laces also meant the garment didn't have to be fitted so exactly, also useful away from Lalassa.

"You have succeeded," the healer informed her, not unkindly. “This one’s no good for rags now. Lie down." She took the pillow from the cot. "Face down. I'll have to get the splinters out before I can do any healing."

Kel rose, still holding the shirt to her chest. The healer _hmphed_. "You can let go of the shirt before you get on my nice clean bed. The only men nearby are asleep."

Kel was doing as she was told when a familiar voice said, "It’s only honorable that I inform you that I am actually awake," and she clutched it to her chest again.

"Well, you shouldn't be," scolded the healer as Kel turned to see Dom, pale but apparently whole, in the next bed.

"Hello, Kel. Find any more excitement?" he asked, head no longer listing in sleep but his eyes still closed.

"A bit," she replied. She realized that he probably hadn't been told about the battle with the strange machine that had cost him his last corporal.

"I would put up a screen, but the quartermaster has not yet seen fit to fulfill my request. So you, sergeant, will have to turn your head for a moment. Close your eyes and go back to sleep, while you're at it."

Dom obeyed. Kel put her shirt on the chair and laid on the the bed. The healer held the sides of her breastband to her back, which kept her from being entirely topless. There was no one else awake inside the tent and the angles of the open tent flap shielded her from passers-by, but Kel was grateful for it anyway. The usual Dom-induced fizzing in her belly was amplified by the circumstances. It warred with pain and with guilt and sadness over Symric until she felt faintly nauseous from all the emotions roiling within her.

It could have been much worse, she knew. If they hadn’t been able to trap the head the thing  could have easily killed all of Dom’s squad and Kel herself. That knowledge didn't make him any less dead.

"I'm going to find tweezers," the healer announced, placing a sheet over Kel's bare back. "Squire, you stay still, and go back to sleep, Sergeant."

"Can I turn my head back, or will I faint away at the sight?" Dom asked after her footsteps had faded.

Kel flushed. “I'm covered.”

Dom turned to face her. "Well? how did it go?'

"My lord put me in command after you went down," she said quietly. "He went to deal with giants in the middle and left us to hold the right flank."

"I thought he might," Dom said seriously. "Symric's no good in that situation. Did... were there any objections?"

"Some," Kel admitted. "We reached an understanding, though."

Dom grinned. "It was Wolset, wasn’t it? I hope you reminded him that you're bigger than him."

Dom’s easy acceptance of her and the way he was so familiar her and with his squad that he could guess what had happened made Kel feel better about the way she had treated Wolset. After the battle was over, she had wondered if she ought to feel guilty for handling the man so roughly, especially given his actions later in the fight. She didn't make a habit of using her strength against a smaller man unprovoked, but she had needed him to settle down and follow orders quickly.

"He followed orders," she told Dom now. Suspicious as Wolset had been, he had come through. If he hadn’t thought to trap the head when he had, Kel would be dead.

He chuckled. "And the rest of the afternoon? Did you see any more fighting?"

It probably wasn't her place to tell him, but she couldn't lie or keep talking to him while she hid such news. "Yes. One of the… the machines we've heard rumors of. They're as bad as the tales. Worse.

She took a breath. “Dom, I’m so sorry. We lost Symric."

She heard Dom suck a breath in through his teeth. “Black God give him rest.”

“So mote it be.” Kel didn’t look at him--she could at least give him a bit of privacy. She wanted to reach out to him; stroke his hair or hold him to comfort him, but she couldn’t. There was too much space between the beds for her to reach him without getting up, and the healer would be back any minute. More seriously than that: Dom was a soldier. He had lost men before. Kel was a squire with a silly, unreturned crush. He would bear his grief and continue his duty; she would bite back any tender words and do the same.

Dom hadn’t said anything when the healer returned with tweezers, a lamp, and a second chair. She sat in the chair with Kel's mail and shirt hanging off the back, set the lamp on the other, and folded the sheet back. "This will sting."

It did.

"Tell me what happened?" Dom asked softly after a few moments.

She did. She described the monster as professionally and accurately as she could, the way she would have to set it out in her report. After she told how it decapitated Symric, she stopped. The healer wasn’t digging around in her back at the moment, so she turned her head so she could look at Dom.

“He never lacked for bravery.” Dom's eyes were still closed, his face turned up to the tent's cloth ceiling. Was it because of the sheet, folded back over Kel’s waist, or to keep any tears from escaping? If he had let any tears fall, they had gone into his pillow, out of sight. "Did you kill it?" he asked levelly.

Kel wasn't going to allow herself to cry, for all that she had liked Symric even before he had defended her as leader of the squad. She couldn't let herself cry in public, even if that public was only Dom and the healer, who had surely seen worse. She would do her crying later, into her own pillow in the privacy of her tent.

Instead she kept her voice as level as Dom's. "Cracked the head open. It let something out--the magic that made the thing go, I think. We tied it up afterwards, but it never even twitched."

“You did it?”

“Yes. With the hammer my lord gave me.” Kel reminded herself that she ought to thank Raoul again for that. She had loved the hammer before as a gift and as a well-crafted weapon, but now she appreciated it as a tool that had kept her alive.

"That’s what knocked you around? It broke your ribs?"

"I had it by one...one limb. It mashed me against the boulders, trying to get me to let go."

"It didn't work."

"No."

Dom smiled briefly. "It didn't know you. Never let it be said you back down in the face of anything. Not conservatives with bigger mouths than tilting skills, not nasty rearing horses, not soldiers who don’t have the sense to see you in action before they decide whether you’re good enough to fight. Godsforsaken metal monsters never had a chance."

There was nothing Kel could say to that. She wondered if the healing had addled his mind just a bit.

She realized that there was more about the afternoon that Dom ought to know. “Wolset trapped the head at risk to himself. I promoted him to corporal. A field promotion,” she added hurriedly, hoping he wouldn’t be angry. “I didn’t mean to step on your command, but I thought there should be a chain of command, with both corporals down. The battle wasn’t over.”

“You were right,” Dom said thoughtfully. “And it’s a good choice. He’s got a head on his shoulders.”

"Just two more buttons," said the healer. "And it's laces for you from now on, Squire Keladry."

"Yes, mistress healer." Kel was happy for a distraction, even if it did bring attention back to her poor choice in undergarments.

She got more distraction than she wanted when footsteps sounded on the dirt floor of the tent. Kel, facing away from the door, heard the footsteps stop next to her bed. "Ouch, soldier," said Flyndan’s northern burr. "What did manage to stick yourself with?"

"Buttons," said the healer in a tone of mild disgust.

"Buttons?"

Kel turned her head to the other side, which moved her back enough to make the healer hiss and press on her good shoulder. "Buttons, sir."

Flyndan practically leaped back from where he had been bending over her. Raoul caught him before he went out of the tent.

"The polite thing is to avert your eyes," called Dom from his bed.

"Ah, sergeant," said Flyndan, recovering. "You're awake." He crossed briskly to Dom, telling the healer "You ought to have a screen put up."

"I would have, if the quartermaster would give me a screen," said the healer absently. From the feel of it, she was digging for a piece of button that was buried particularly deep in Kel's flesh.

"I thought I sent you in here to get your ribs checked," Raoul said cheerfully.

"They are only cracked, and a few organs bruised," said the healer briskly. "Along with her left ankle  and the rest of her back, as you can see for yourself. The best thing would be to give her a draught to heal them, and before I can do that I have to get the buttons out."

"Buttons," Raoul repeated, sounding mystified.

"There were five wooden buttons in my breastband, my lord," Kel said, hoping that once the buttons were explained they could drop the matter entirely.

"They _were_ in her breastband until they broke to splinters and dug into her back. Any woman fighting in mail needs a breastband that laces," said the healer firmly.

"I'll be sure to bring the matter before the quartermaster," said Raoul solemnly, "along with the need for screens."

“Please do.” The healer put her tweezers in the cup where she had been depositing the bits of button then placed a hand on Kel’s back. Kel felt her gift wash soothingly along the itching scratches left once the button shards were removed.

“I got them all,” the healer said, sounding satisfied, and that was all the warning Kel got before she dabbed something cold and stinging over the scratches. Kel winced.

The healer pulled the sheet up until it covered Kel’s back again. “I’m getting that draught now,” she told Raoul, who had been talking quietly to Dom with Flydan. “She will fall asleep and be fine when she wakes in the morning. If you need to talk to her, do it now.” She bustled off.

Falling asleep sounded wonderful, as did being fine when she woke. Kel would have been surprised if there was a single bit of unbruised flesh on her throbbing back, and her twisted ankle was sore. Her throat felt better than it had, at least, even with all the talking she’d done with Dom. The healer must have soothed it while she plucked out splinters. Not as strict as she talked, that one.

Raoul came around the bed, back into her field of vision. “Well done this afternoon. Not bad for your first official bit of leadership. That device could would have been a problem had it reached the center.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Raoul stuck his hands in his pockets, and gazed at her seriously. “Don’t beat yourself up about Symric. He knew the chances when he joined the Own.”

“Yes, my lord.” Kel knew that. Symric was a soldier, and soldiers fell in battle. She might very well do the same, in the close or distant future, and could only hope that she would do so honorably.

“Get some sleep, then,” Raoul told her. “You’ve earned it.”

She smiled at him and he left the tent. Flyndan followed, nodding to her briefly as he passed.

 _Now that I’m decently covered,_ Kel thought a bit bitterly. It wasn’t as if she wanted to be able to walk the camp naked without anyone batting an eye, but there were times when being the sole female among men was irritating.

The healer helped Kel prop herself up on her right elbow so she could drink the bitter healing draught, then covered her with the sheet.

“Thank you, mistress healer,” Kel said as the woman gathered cups, tweezers, and extra chair.

The woman paused to look at her. “It is my duty,” she said, the words kinder than anything else Kel had heard pass her lips. “You protect the realm, and I mop you up after. There is no need to thank me.”

“I do anyway.” Kel could feel her mind beginning to drift into sleep. “We’d be in a sorry state without healers.”

The healer snorted. “You will be sorry, if you come back to me with buttons in your back again. Thank me by wearing laces.”

It was an odd thing to say, Kel thought dreamily. “Yes, mistress healer.”

She thought she ought to wish Dom a good night, but she fell asleep before she could put the words together.


End file.
